Build your societal impact reputation
with Pure
Updated: June 14, 2021
Web version: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/build-your-societal-impact-reputation
What is your university’s role in
Societal Impact?
Increasingly, university leadership, governments, funders,
the community, and others are demanding to understand
the value of university research. They want to know that the
significant investment in research is going to help society.
Munk et al. (2017) in the article, Five Ways Universities
are Organising Themselves to Increase Societal Impact,
recognize this importance:
“Aside from the major responsibility of education
and knowledge, what purpose do universities
serve? Many academic institutions around world
are beginning to recognise their role in creating
political, economic and social value, as well as
their ability to become an ‘embedded brain’ within
society. The vast resources, research capabilities
and connections which universities hold can foster,
promote, and lead social innovation globally.”
A university can contribute to societal impact in
multiple ways. For example:
• Policies to ensure food on campus is sustainably farmed
• Access to mental health for students and faculty
• Upgrading existing buildings to a higher energy efficiency
rating
Another central area where universities demonstrate societal
impact is with the research they do. When a university
participates in research that brings solutions to society, they
act as part of the community to solve the world’s problems.
Read the latest version of this article online: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/build-your-societal-impact-reputation
Why is it important to showcase your
SDG-related research?
Some important reasons to share the work you are doing in
research that contributes to the SDGs:
• Students want to attend a university that demonstrates a
commitment to sustainability
• Faculty want to work on solving big societal problems
• Reputation is often affected by the perception of the
university and what it does to
Times Higher Education held the Innovation & Impact
Summit in April 2021. At this event was a panel titled, “The
power of profile: How universities are using evidence of
their impact to build global reputation impact.” A participant
said that talking about sustainable development gives you a
whole new way of talking about what you do at universities
and how you contribute to society in various ways.
How can the Pure Research Infor-
mation Management System (RIMS)
help?
Times Higher Education (THE), Vertigo Ventures, Elsevier
and others collaborated on developing search queries to
represent the research in the first 16 SDGs. Full details of
the methodology for each SDG search query are available on
Mendeley.
Using the same search strings, Pure identifies the research faculty of the law school.
belonging to the correct sustainable development goal. You
can also add these manually. Pure then highlights these in In the Pure profile, you can find out more about this
many ways, from the Portal to Reporting. researcher including, CV, what departments they are
associated with, and their recent collaboration network.
Pure Portal
For even more detail about the author’s publications, you can
The Pure Portal is the public-facing part of this Research also view his profile in Scopus.
Information System solution (RIMS). It enables you to exhibit
your organization externally, promote your researchers and
their accomplishments, and facilitate collaboration, and most
importantly, contribute to your reputation.
Now, you can highlight the SDG research on your Pure
Portal home page. Below are examples from the University of
Rosario.

Scopus provides even more information about this author, including the
topics he publishes in most frequently.

Scopus provides even more information about Dr. Héctor

The Pure Portal showcases your SDG-related research for discovery Olásolo. For example, he publishes on several topics,
including International Criminal Court, Criminal Tribunals,
You can click on any of the SDG Crimes Against Humanity.
icons for a summary of the activity
within that goal. To the right is Research Output
the information for SDG 16: Peace,
Another way to discover research about the Sustainable
justice and strong institutions.
Development Goals is to look at all the output related to a
Researchers goal or goals.
Pure tags each researcher with the sustainability areas in In the example below, you can see a list of the SDG 16
which they are involved. As you can see from the above output.
example, three researchers are highlighted under SDG
16. From the Portal home page, you can navigate to these
researchers.

Filter the researchers by their associated SDGs to find potential partners

and more.

You can get even more information by looking at the

researcher’s profile.

Pure gives you a list of all research output per SDG, providing an
excellent way to build your reputation.

From here, you can use even more filters to see exactly what
you want. For example, below we’ve filtered the output to the
most recent year.

By looking at the researcher’s profile, you have more information to help

you understand this person. For example, Dr. Héctor Olásolo is in the

Read the latest version of this article online: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/build-your-societal-impact-reputation

 Munk, J., Rim, S. J., & Pulford, L. (2017, September 12). Five
ways universities are organising themselves to increase
societal impact. Social Innovation Exchange.

The most recent SDG 16 articles.

Reporting
While the Pure Portal is an excellent way to showcase your
efforts on the UN Sustainable Development goals – and
hence a lot of societal impact research – Pure provides
reporting for internal users to understand their SDG-related
research. This information can help inform communications,
grant submissions, recruitment, and more.
In the example below, view a quick overview of the most and
least active SDGs.

A quick look at the research output for each SDG for planning,
communication, and more.

You can further see your top authors and departments as

well. Allowing you to drill deeper and deeper for specific
information to help inform strategy, reputation-building,
collaboration opportunities and more.

Explore the active researchers and departments in the SDGs.

Tagging the research in Pure, with its associated SDG

gives visibility into the work you are doing around these
goals. These associations, in turn, can help you build your
reputation. Since your students, faculty, and community care
about your societal impact, using the SDGs can be a good
proxy for demonstrating it.

Read the latest version of this article online: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/build-your-societal-impact-reputation

Read the latest version of this article online: https://www.elsevier.com/research-intelligence/build-your-societal-impact-reputation